The concurrent engineering (CE) approach has been successfully applied to the early design phase of space missions. During CE sessions, a software support is needed to allow multidisciplinary design data exchange. At the moment, a spreadsheet-based solution enhanced with macros is used at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to create a system model of a space mission during the early design phase. Now there is an increasing demand to take advantage of this system model and provide data analysis features which improve the decision making during CE sessions. Since the current approach is limited for such analysis, DLR has started developing a new tool called Virtual Satellite. It offers extended software support required by the Concurrent Engineering Facility of DLR in Bremen. On top of the previous spreadsheet functionalities, it provides means for online data analysis and system modeling. The results of these data analyses are presented to the discipline experts using different views which help in performing an early design optimization. In this paper, the impact of these views on the decision making during the AEGIS space mission study is presented as a proof of concept.
Today, phase A studies of future space systems are often conducted in special design facilities such as the Concurrent Engineering Facility at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Within these facilities, the studies are performed following a defined process making use of a data model for information exchange. Quite often it remains unclear what exactly such a data model is and how it is implemented and applied. Nowadays, such a data model is usually a software using a formal specification describing its capabilities within a so-called meta-model. This meta-model, often referred as conceptual data model, is finally used and instantiated as system model during these concurrent engineering studies. Such software also provides a user interface for instantiating and sharing the system model within the design team and it provides capabilities to analyze the system model on the fly. This is possible due to the semantics of the underlying conceptual data model creating a common language used to exchange and process design information. This article explains the implementation of the data model at DLR and shows information how it is applied in the concurrent engineering process of the Concurrent Engineering Facility. It highlights important aspects concerning the modeling capabilities during a study and discusses how they can be implemented into a corresponding conceptual data model. Accordingly, the article presents important aspects such as rights management and data consistency and the implications of them to the software's underlying technology. A special use case of the data model is depicted and shows the flexibility of the implementation proven by a study of a multi-module space station.
On-board computer software (OBSW) is an integral part of every space mission. It has been continuously growing in size and complexity. The insufficient level of automation in the development process of such software leads to low software reusability and drives up the costs. This paper presents a generic approach to describe and model the on-board software in terms of data that is processed by it. Domain Specific Language (DSL) based framework is developed using which provides a DSL editor, a model validator, and a code generator. Using the framework, a system data model is created. The C++ code is generated from it which is then customized to implement lowlevel behavior. As a proof of concept, the telecommand handling functionality of OBSW is developed to prove the feasibility of applying the solution to the whole system. Based on the analysis conducted on the source code of the TET-1 satellite of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), a DSL is designed and implemented. The resulting DSL-based framework is tested with an example model and target code customization, showing its ease of use and proving that it behaves as expected.
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